Fun fact: I watched all of the first season of Jessica Jones in a day. At the time, I was living in England and was so incredibly bored that I order some British pizza (it's just as disappointing as it sounds), camped out on a cou...

It isn’t often that you see a comfortable, workmanlike series like Yakuza do a complete overhaul in game mechanics or engine. The last time a dramatic shift like this happened was after Yakuza 2 to the Japan-only Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan...

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 can be a brutally unforgiving game. Just as you think you've gotten the edge over a brutal Bile Troll, the game's AI will spawn in a group of Gas Rats to knock you down a peg.  On many occasions, I've watched my...

Burnout Paradise: it's the racing game that every publisher, including EA with its countless Need for Speed iterations, has tried to emulate since 2008. It's such a simple thing, drop players into a rich sandbox and let them have at it...

Mars is dead. The International Mars Mission, a global effort to establish a self-sufficient colony on Earth's nearest neighbor, is dead because of two idiots. The first idiot was Anthony Krillov, an idiot whose foolish, clumsy flailing cau...

I had to do a double-take once I realized we haven't had a mainstream console Kirby in seven years. Seven years! It almost seemed like Nintendo was ready to plop the little fluff ball onto portables permanently, and given that the Swit...

Puzzle games live or die by their progression within the game and the puzzles themselves. If there is no satisfaction or great eureka moments from solving a difficult puzzle in the game you're playing, then chances are, you'll probably be t...

Detention is a surreal horror game set in historic Taiwan, where the nation is in a state of Communist paranoia and certain literature has been outlawed. The game follows two students that wake up to find themselves alone in their school, a...

Whatever else virtual reality has become in the years since its commercial debut, it's beyond dispute that it has become, in large measure, the new home of the lightgun genre. For every creative, even transcendent VR experience, there are h...

A few weeks ago I had the displeasure to sit through Eli Roth's Death Wish, a revenge thriller that sucked for many reasons, but most importantly because you didn't really care about the revenge at all. There was no emotional push to get yo...

As we move forward in board gaming's current golden age, new games are coming out at an incredible pace. Even so, many provide only new dressing on existing ideas. Once in a while, something comes along that feels so new and different, it i...

Detention was my favorite place to be after school. I was a bit of a smart ass back then, which I suppose hasn’t changed much, and my mouth got me into trouble more often than not. I frittered away a lot of my time goofing around, and...

Veteran comedic actor Bill Hader and writer-producer Alec Berg knew they had to develop a series for HBO, but didn't know what. While bouncing ideas off of each other, Bill said, "What if I was a hitman?" Alec was skeptical. "No, it'd be me...

Blumhouse is on a roll right now. They're making some of the biggest hits in horror, and, of course just pulled in an Academy Award nomination for Get Out. That's why I was really excited when an untitled Blumhouse horror film was goin...

I do not envy anyone that wants to make a high concept sci-fi epic. There are so many different pieces that need to fall into place in order to make something that's truly special and engaging. Most of the time, when you see a massive sci-f...

How do you follow up a game like FTL? The game became such a huge hit in 2012 and showed what a successful Kickstarter could look like. Many people fondly look back at the countless hours lost in space, watching crew members and s...

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of CHUCHEL before I accepted this review. A code appeared for us describing a cool soundtrack and hunting for cherries, but it wasn’t until someone replied saying Amanita Design was behind the g...

Truth be told, Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match isn't the game I wanted out of something based on one of my favorite anime series.  That game would be the ideal ambassador for the joy of Girls und Panzer, bringing its unique ble...

Not all video games are created equal. Like, there's obviously a quality discrepancy that sets games apart -- it's why we do the whole scored review thing. But I mean, not every video game aspires to be a masterpiece. Some just want to be s...

Gaming's most unlikable protagonists are back. Yes, Hana, Rain, Deke, and Glas have returned from an extended hiatus to wreak havoc and steal stuff in their own inimitable way. Lock and load folks because, some 17 years later, Fear Effect i...

DJMax was one of those series that was just on the cusp of breaking out into the mainstream. It wasn't quite "niche" and it wasn't a worldwide phenomenon like DDR, but it's had a respectable fanbase for over a decade and it deserves another...

It’s easy to see mobile gaming as nothing more than a cash grab that preys on players' desire for success with as little effort as possible. That’s why there are massive ad campaigns for so many mobile games that don’t eve...

I wouldn't expect for an RTS game to make its way into VR and work as well as it does in Brass Tactics. I also didn't expect the RTS genre to work so well with a controller, but then Tooth and Tail came in and blew me away. I guess the...

Clone systems everywhere, in my dreams, and my nightmares. Clone systems coming out of my ears. It feels like not that long ago the first cheap NES clones were coming out. They felt so novel back then, a way to play your old games without d...

Sprint Vector is one of the fastest-paced VR experiences I've ever had. It's a cross somewhere between a kart racer, the first-person sprinting of Mirror's Edge, and the style of Jet Set Radio.  You can compete against AI or frien...